This letter was sent to Rahm Emmanuel friday, after hearing consecutive reports about increased security for the G8 and the potential installation of Speed Cameras though out the city.
Dear Mayor Emmanuel:
As Chicago is cast into the international spotlight this coming spring you have announced a wide variety of various punitive and surveillance initiatives to ensure so called "security" at the approaching G8 and NATO summits to be held in our fair city. Beyond that you have chosen to expand the use of unmanned surveillance to enforce various and sundry laws. I am not addressing the fact that penalizing the owner of a car for the actions of the driver goes against written law in our state. Nor am I writing to address the fact that your petty desire for some imagined control borders on creepy. I am writing with a reminder and a warning.
Thus far you have used a comparatively light hand in the suppression of dissent in your city. Not one person has been arrested for speaking their mind provided that they shut up when told. By failing to give legitimate grievances their due, you have shown who your masters are. However, you have handled matters in far better ways than your predecessors, the mayors Daily. That being said you must know that you are in the wrong. Free speech has no "zone", and you are no King. You would claim that a suppression of speech is for the betterment of Chicago when everyone knows, Mr. Mayor, that it is for the betterment of yourself. We are not fooled and we will not be dissuaded. You may turn your officers on us, but would do well to remember that they ARE us. A Uniform and a badge does not make take away the fact that our concerns are theirs and our problems are their problems. This is my reminder to you Mr. Mayor.
My warning is simple. As you turn your cameras on us, so to will we turn ours on you. You may post cameras at every intersection and surveillance on every street, but we still are watching. We are recording, and by the time anyone you might send to disrupt or disengage us knows they are being watched, the world will know what we have seen. We will be watching. We will be recording. We will be documenting and sharing and reporting what it is you do. You cannot escape our watchful eyes. Our cell phones and flip cams, our Nikons and Canons, from iPhone to ustream we will be watching you and by extension so will the world. Because as you have taught us Mr. Mayor, such actions are necessary for our safety.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Letter to Mike O'Neal "You Were Unwise"
I wrote this letter to Kansas' Speaker of the House, Mike O'Neal. Speaker O'Neal wrote a letter to his GOP colleagues recently in which he said that he had finally found a prayer in the Bible to pray for our President. He then quoted the first two line of the following prayer.
In response to this, I wrote Mr. O'Neal the following email.
Dear Speaker O'Neil
I am sure in light of your recent email regarding the death of our president you have taken a lot of heat. I'm sure that you have been called a racist. I'm sure that you have been called insane. I will not refer to you as either of these. As far as I am concerned you are a traitor. You cited a psalm that in it's entirety begs for innocent children to be beggars in the street and to go without comfort. I ask you, what if someone said the same of your children. You asked that Mrs. Obama be left a widow. What if someone said the same of your wife.
I have followed the actions of your state since 2010 and find the legislation against women passed by your legislature repugnant. I still would not celebrate if you died. Perhaps you forgot the national tragedy that is the assassination of the president, because you have just called for our nation to be dragged through it again. Perhaps you have forgotten the national tragedy that came only a year ago when a Representative was shot. The Giffords shooting was not over political causes and still it gave all parties in the country pause to consider their conduct. You have just called for a man to be killed because you disagree with him on a political level. You have called for the death of the President of the United States who was elected by the people of this country and who can in his due be fired by said people if they so choose. Yet you obviously have no love for this country because you have asked that the institutions and processes that make it great, that make it fair, that make it free be tossed aside by some enterprising nut job.
Your excuse that the prayer asked only for his days in office to be few holds no water, because you callously went on to the next line of the psalm asking that his children be fatherless and his wife be widowed. If someone answers your prayer Mr. O'Neal, on your urging, then you are a traitor and have acted against this country. Perhaps I should thank my lucky stars that in such an event we have the recently signed NDAA to deal with you accordingly.
The people of your state would be wise to call for your ouster now, but may be patient enough wait for an election to fire you from your job. I will repeat one line of your prayer for you "let another take his office" the rest I will be civilized enough to ignore.
Let his days be few; and let another take his office
May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes.
May a creditor seize all he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.
May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children.
In response to this, I wrote Mr. O'Neal the following email.
Dear Speaker O'Neil
I am sure in light of your recent email regarding the death of our president you have taken a lot of heat. I'm sure that you have been called a racist. I'm sure that you have been called insane. I will not refer to you as either of these. As far as I am concerned you are a traitor. You cited a psalm that in it's entirety begs for innocent children to be beggars in the street and to go without comfort. I ask you, what if someone said the same of your children. You asked that Mrs. Obama be left a widow. What if someone said the same of your wife.
I have followed the actions of your state since 2010 and find the legislation against women passed by your legislature repugnant. I still would not celebrate if you died. Perhaps you forgot the national tragedy that is the assassination of the president, because you have just called for our nation to be dragged through it again. Perhaps you have forgotten the national tragedy that came only a year ago when a Representative was shot. The Giffords shooting was not over political causes and still it gave all parties in the country pause to consider their conduct. You have just called for a man to be killed because you disagree with him on a political level. You have called for the death of the President of the United States who was elected by the people of this country and who can in his due be fired by said people if they so choose. Yet you obviously have no love for this country because you have asked that the institutions and processes that make it great, that make it fair, that make it free be tossed aside by some enterprising nut job.
Your excuse that the prayer asked only for his days in office to be few holds no water, because you callously went on to the next line of the psalm asking that his children be fatherless and his wife be widowed. If someone answers your prayer Mr. O'Neal, on your urging, then you are a traitor and have acted against this country. Perhaps I should thank my lucky stars that in such an event we have the recently signed NDAA to deal with you accordingly.
The people of your state would be wise to call for your ouster now, but may be patient enough wait for an election to fire you from your job. I will repeat one line of your prayer for you "let another take his office" the rest I will be civilized enough to ignore.
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